A beacon of light in these tumultuous times

In these tumultuous political and cultural times, it’s easy to presume the future is bleak. However, after attending a conference centered around medicine, public health, and medical science innovation, replete with remarkable stories of human perseverance, resilience, and courage, I felt humbled, inspired, and hopeful. In that order.
Who cannot be awed listening to the one physician who kept treating desperately ill patients when the entire rest of the medical staff abandoned a Liberian hospital at the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic? Or the lone Syrian female OB/GYN who continued to serve her patients, often performing surgery by the light of an iPhone flashlight while her beloved city of Aleppo was being bombed to ruins around her?
Who cannot be humbled by the brilliance of neuroscientists, computational microbiologists, biomedical engineers, CRISPR specialists, and computer hackers who are coming up with medical treatments that would have been unimaginable five years ago? Or the blind software engineer working on making computers more accessible to the disabled who also happens to be a Paralympics cycling champion?
Continue reading ...
Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

Related Links:

U.S. Senate, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. 11/30/2017 This two-hour, 30-minute Congressional hearing discusses the current opioid crisis, with providers, public safety officials, and state health officials who are on the front lines fighting the epidemic, speak to what is happening on the ground, and what more Congress can do to help them address the crisis. Topics include Rhode Island's Strategic Plan to Address Opioid Addiction and Overdose, which recommended specific, evidence-based strategies in four areas: prevention, rescue, treatment, and recovery. (Video or Multimedia)

Brookings Institution. 11/03/2017 These presentations and panel discussion focus on how public policy can address the opioid epidemic. Speakers discuss the underlying issues that contributed to the opioid crisis, increased rates of alcoholism and suicide among certain segments of the American population, and the report of the President's Commission on Combatting Opioid Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. (Video or Multimedia)

Imagine a world in which caring for the deeply forgetful is deemed a privilege and a trust.By Stephen PostAlzheimer's Reading RoomI do believe that we will see a spiritual-cultural shift away from the ideology of “hyper-cognitive values” that has regrettably blinded us to the enduring selves underlying the deeply forgetful.How can we encounter the deeply forgetful outside of hyper-cognitive ideologies?Dementia Patients are People TooHow can we bear witness to the reality that persons with this cognitive disability possess inherent qualities, and create a culture where all are welcomed and celebrated regardless ...

Last week at the Treasury Select Committee Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond MP, in answer to a question about the cause of poor productivity implied that the UK’s poor productivity levels were the result of disabled people in the workforce.
He said:
‘It is almost certainly the case that by increasing participation in the workforce, including higher participation by marginal groups and very high levels of engagement in the workforce, for example disabled people – something we should be extremely proud of – may have had an impact on overall productivity measurements.’
UNISON disabled m...

Is your child’s development on track for his or her age? Now you can find out with CDC’s new free Milestone Tracker app. The app makes it easy for parents to track, support, and celebrate their young child’s development.
“Skills like taking a first step, saying those first words, and waving ‘bye-bye’ are developmental milestones all parents anticipate and celebrate,” said CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, M.D. “This CDC Milestone Tracker app gives parents tips to help their child learn and grow, a way to track developmental milestones, recognize delays, and the ability to share...

We described monthly: the number of persons (i) screened actively; (ii) or passively; (iii) treated for HAT; (iv) attending post-treatment follow-up visits. We compared clinical data, treatment characteristics and Disability Adjusted Life-Years (DALYs) before (February 2012 to December 2013) and during (January 2014 to October 2015) the Ebola outbreak period according to available data. Whereas 32,221 persons were actively screened from February 2012 to December 2013, before the official declaration of the first Ebola case in Guinea, no active screening campaigns could be performed during the Ebola outbreak. Following the ...

Have you ever thought that it would be possible to monitor drug overdoses, Zika cases or the spread of the flu in real time? Have you ever imagined that satellites wouldbe able to tell how and where a malaria epidemic will happen months before the actual outbreak? It is mind-blowing how, in the last years, digital maps developed to a level where they serve as effective tools for evaluating, monitoring and even predicting health events. That’s why I decided to give a comprehensive overview of digital maps in healthcare.
John Snow, cholera and the revolution of maps in healthcare
Before Game of Thrones monopolized Joh...

At its 70th U.N. World Health Assembly in Geneva in late May, the World Health Organization (WHO) made history with the election of a new Director-General: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia – the first African to lead the organization. He now takes on the challenge of combating both infectious and noncommunicable diseases and other health challenges around the world. To succeed, he must convince the world to see health as a global public good—something in which we all have a stake.
An announcement by the WHO on May 12 underscores this point. A new Ebola outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of C...

March 06, 2017Salome was one of 830 women around the world who died that day from problems related to childbirth.Liberian nursing assistant Salome Karwah was a woman, a sister, a wife. She also was a health worker and a survivor of Ebola who saved many lives during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in her country.She survived Ebola, but nearly three years later, she did not survive complications after childbirth.WhenTIME magazine chose to honor Ebola fighters as the “person of the year” in 2014, Salome ’s photo was on the cover. AtIntraHealth International, we felt gratified that health workers, and our missio...